Thomas Industrial Marketing & Manufacturing Blog

HubSpot Announces New Free CRM Software

Written by Shawn Fitzgerald | September 16, 2014

Psst! Hey! Yeah you. When was the last time the marketing department got a high five for saving the company money? Doesn’t happen, right?

Well that just changed.

Prepare yourself for a possible parade in your name put on by the accounting department and the VP of Sales, because you are about to deliver a brand new CRM system to them for free.

Co-Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah just announced at Inbound2014 that they have developed a brand new CRM system that sits on top of their widely used HubSpot marketing automation platform that they developed in June of 2006 (that more than 12,000 customers have used to generate millions of new leads and sales opportunities).

This is the logical progression based on Salesforce.com acquiring Pardot and other players in the space scooping up the available technology. Want to hear the best part about this announcement? The CRM system will be included FOR FREE with your HubSpot subscription this fall (and free to all in 2015). Gone are the days of paying for both your marketing automation and your sales CRM software.  

As an added bonus you will now be able to track the sales team’s progress on the precious leads you’ve generated for them in real time in the same system. No more guessing or taking anyone’s word for it. Just the facts.

Ready to rip open the wrapping on that nice new present you just found? Let’s take a look inside:

CRM Features:

  • Rolling out to HubSpot and Sidekick (Formerly Signals) customers in 2014
  • Assign to different sales reps as you generate leads in HubSpot
  • Leave notes on prospect and customer discussions
  • Send emails straight from CRM
  • Make sales calls and record audio straight from CRM dashboard (additional fees)
  • Log your activity
  • Create tasks for future follow up
  • Schedule meetings, calls, and quote reviews
  • See the contact activity history in the CRM timeline
  • Track your closed deals
  • Generate reports to manage your sales team
  • Open to anyone who wants a FREE CRM system in 2015
  • Um, did I mention this was totally FREE

Sidekick (formerly Signals) Features:

  • Deep insights while writing emails (left bar loads with customer activity and company info)
  • Open & click tracking for sent emails
  • Add new contacts to CRM with one click while authoring email to new prospect
  • Append company information automatically to new contact entries
  • See who else has had contact with the company from your organization as you send emails
  • See deeper info about who has visited your site from each domain you visit on the web
  • Ah yeah this is FREE for up to 200 notifications, upgrade to unlimited for $10/month.

Much like your mobile device has evolved from a mere telephone to include multiple formats for communication, a camera, the ability to access the internet, and install additional functionality for a fee — this is just the beginning. Be on the lookout for HubSpot’s hundreds of developers to keep pumping out functionality and increase the capabilities over the next year.

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